A Former LAPD Detective Believes He Knows Who Shot Tupac

A former LAPD detective believes he has the key to unlocking Tupac's murder.

Scores of theories regarding Tupac's murder that fateful Las Vegas night in 1996 have circulated over the years, from the vaguely compelling to the utterly insane. Now Vice reports that a former LAPD detective named Russell Poole says he believes he knows the identity of the perpetrators.

Poole's story goes like this: A jailhouse informant wrote a local crime reporter telling him that Malcolm Patton, his brother, and a Long Beach Crip named Donald Smith killed Tupac with assistance from Death Row security guard Reggie Wright, Jr. and Suge Knight's wife. The crime reporter than passed along the information to Poole.

Poole spoke with Vice for the most part because he wants the 19-year ordeal to end. ”If this was Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra who got murdered, there would’ve been arrests a long time ago,” he said. “This case can be solved, but needs police follow-up. There are clues sitting right in front of the police. It’s a travesty of justice.”

The veracity of as Patton's jailhouse statement/boast is hard to confirm, as many inmates would likely find going down in history as the dude who shot Tupac preferable to not going down in history at all. Nevertheless, it is an appealing story. Poole suggests that Tupac stole the lyrics to "Brenda's Got A Baby" from Smith, a.k.a. Death Row affiliate Lil 1/2 Dead (mentioned in Snoop Dogg's "Lil Ghetto Boy"), thus giving him a personal vendetta against Tupac.